Problem with the remote control

1st Official Post

    There is a box with an Intel Atom Z3735D processor. Initially, Android 4.2.2 was installed on it. When buying a box, the remote control was not included. I installed the Mi remote application on an Android phone with an infrared port and found a suitable remote control profile there, I managed to control the box from the phone. I installed LE in the internal memory, everything works fine, except for the remote control. ir-keytable shows the following:

    Code
    LibreELEC:~ # ir-keytable
/sys/class/rc/: No such file or directory
No devices found

    After that I edited autostart.sh as it is written here Infrared Remotes [LibreELEC.wiki]

    Bash
    #!/bin/sh

(
setserial /dev/ttyS0 uart unknown
modprobe serial_ir
)&

    After that ir-keytable shows the following:

    Code
    LibreELEC: ~ # ir-keytable
Found / sys / class / rc / rc0 / (/ dev / input / event7) with:
Name: Serial IR type home-brew
Driver: serial_ir, table: rc-rc6-mce
lirc device: / dev / lirc0
Supported protocols: lirc rc-5 rc-5-sz jvc sony nec sanyo mce_kbd rc-6 sharp xmp imon rc-mm
Enabled protocols: lirc sony
bus: 25, vendor / product: 0001: 0001, version: 0x0100
Repeat delay = 500 ms, repeat period = 125 ms

    But according to the article Infrared Remotes [LibreELEC.wiki], I cannot get this profiles to work from MI Remote with LE. Running the ir-keytable -p PROTOCOL -t command with each of the protocols does not give any result, it does not respond to button presses in the remote control. Tell me how to configure the remote control in this situation

    Edited once, last by achilles_85 (October 2, 2019 at 1:51 PM).

    It would be very unlikely if the box had a built-in IR receiver connected to a serial port. So it would be interesting to know what kind of IR receiver is used in this box and how it's connected.

    Can you post some more info about this box plus dmesg, lsusb and lspci output.

    so long,

    Hias

    • Official Post
    Quote from achilles_85

    I installed the Mi remote application on an Android phone with an infrared port...

    That means you are using an IR receiver dongle at serial port, right?

    Code
    Supported protocols: lirc rc-5 rc-5-sz jvc sony nec sanyo mce_kbd rc-6 sharp xmp imon rc-mm
Enabled protocols: lirc sony

    Do you use a LIRC RC? If not, disable it at Settings -> Services and reboot, as mentioned at your first link (part Troubleshooting).

    Thanks for the logs!


    There are no signs of an IR receiver present in the logs (usually you'd see the nuvoton, winbond, ITE etc ACPI PNP IDs in dmesg).

    I'd recommend checking the BIOS settings, usually the CIR (consumer IR) port has to be enabled manually.

    so long,

    Hias

    • Official Post

    Some more words would be helpful. I assume your answer to my first question is "yes", and to my second question is "no, LIRC is disabled, because /storage/.config/lircd.conf doesn't exists in my configuration".

    Do you see the gap of supported / enabled protocols? The reason for that gap could be your IR dongle. If you bought a LIRC dongle, then it probably can't deal with the most other supported protocols.

    If the dongle worked with other Linux OS'es then it's probably a driver problem (different kernel).

    Quote from Da Flex

    Some more words would be helpful. I assume your answer to my first question is "yes", and to my second question is "no, LIRC is disabled, because /storage/.config/lircd.conf doesn't exists in my configuration".

    Do you see the gap of supported / enabled protocols? The reason for that gap could be your IR dongle. If you bought a LIRC dongle, then it probably can't deal with the most other supported protocols.

    If the dongle worked with other Linux OS'es then it's probably a driver problem (different kernel).

    No, i don't use usb IR dongle, my box has a built-in IR receiver. This IR receiver works fine under android, but it refuses to work under Linux.

    I had a look at the Intel Z3700 series datasheet and it doesn't mention a built-in IR receiver.

    My guess is the manufacturer might have connected a TSOP IR receiver to some GPIO and software decoded the signals in an Android driver - or something like that.

    As there doesn't seem to be any real info available about this box (links to forum posts with BIOS are all dead now) I'd guess chances of getting the IR receiver working is about zero.

    Probably best to just buy an MCE USB receiver (eg an HP branded one from ebay), these work out of the box with LibreELEC.

    so long,

    Hias

    • Official Post
    Quote from achilles_85

    No, i don't use usb IR dongle, my box has a built-in IR receiver. This IR receiver works fine under android, but it refuses to work under Linux.

    Android-x86 OS'es are usually based on Linux kernels. At this point, my conclusion is that your built-in IR receiver is made for LIRC, and does not support most of the IR protocols LE is offering. Your Android-x86 OS probably has LIRC enabled, and that's why it's working. Under LE you have to enable / configure it as mentioned.

    Many LE users prefer CEC, because it uses the TV remote control without the need of dealing with IR signals.

    Quote from Da Flex

    Your Android-x86 OS probably has LIRC enabled, and that's why it's working. Under LE you have to enable / configure it as mentioned.

    Sorry, but this is nonsense. LIRC needs an IR device/driver where it gets it's signals from and this is missing with the box. Running LIRC won't help.

    so long,

    Hias

    Quote from Da Flex

    If you have a look at the start posting (ir-keytable output), you can see that the LIRC device is ready to go.

    Sigh. If you had paid more attention then you'd noticed that this was the serial_ir module the OP had loaded and as the SOC has a built-in UART the module load succeeded. This doesn't mean that there's an IR receiver attached to the serial port.

    Serial port IR receivers were mainly homebrew stuff some 15 years ago when PCs usually had at least one serial port. Chances of finding that in some commercial stuff from the last 5 years - as this box - are very, very low, as I mentioned in my first post here.

    so long,

    Hias

    • Official Post
    Quote from HiassofT

    Sigh. If you had paid more attention then you'd noticed that this was the serial_ir module the OP had loaded and as the SOC has a built-in UART the module load succeeded. This doesn't mean that there's an IR receiver attached to the serial port.

    We know the IR receiver is attached, and the serial_ir driver has been loaded. That's enough for me to trust the /dev/lirc0 output.

    The Android-x86 Linux (yes, I'm sure it's Linux) can handle it, which makes it very likely to work with LE, too.

    Quote from Da Flex

    We know the IR receiver is attached, and the serial_ir driver has been loaded. That's enough for me to trust the /dev/lirc0 output.

    The Android-x86 Linux (yes, I'm sure it's Linux) can handle it, which makes it very likely to work with LE, too.

    Sorry, this is utter nonsense. The serial_ir driver will load whenever there's an UART present. And as the OP already wrote in his first post that he's not getting any output chances are very high there's nothing attached there.

    Please stop spamming threads with nonsense posts if you have nothing useful to contribute.

    so long,

    Hias

    Quote from Da Flex

    What kind of output do you expect from a serial port device at boot time?

    Nothing.

    Homebrew IR receivers connected to a serial port don't report themselves to the system so it's not possible to detect if they are connected or not.

    Loading serial_ir will always succeed, whether you have a receiver connected or not. But of course, if nothing is connected you won't get anything from ir-keytable -t or ir-ctl -r. Just test it for yourself - either with serial_ir on a x86 PC or with gpio-ir-receiver on RPi.

    so long,

    Hias